a Projected Particle Cannon or PPC is a fictional weapon created by the BattleTech game, untill now similar things seem fictional in nature, but with the exceeding breakthoughs in the enerygy and laser fields i belive that it is more and more a reality. a Particle beam weapon would require somewhere around 1,000,000,000 volts of electricity, though nowhere near cost effective, there is no known defense agenst such a weapon. imagine tanks melting like butter in the microwave,
roadblocks and buildings being vaporized.

though i do not belive that a weapon like this should ever be created, i could see certain advantages to adapting this technolagy for mining,satilite defences vrs ICBM's,or as our technolagy becomes evermore spacebearing, i could imagine it being used as a weapon on a spacecraft. cause who knows what you'll run into in the deep dark of space.

Basically the main problem with this technology is the power consumption.
It is impossible to have any practical military applications in the current era as there are no battlefield power plants capable of creating such a device.
Although it is quite possible and would not surprise me if a stationary device has been constructed (read Bush's plan dubbed ''Star Wars'').

In a nutshell our power systems are not advanced enough to avail of such technologies, we are still burning dead plants!